1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910459234703321

Autore

Lobsien Verena Olejniczak

Titolo

Transparency and dissimulation [[electronic resource] ] : configurations of Neoplatonism in early modern English literature / / Verena Olejniczak Lobsien

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berlin ; ; New York, : De Gruyter, c2010

ISBN

1-282-67321-1

9786612673214

3-11-022885-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (318 p.)

Collana

Transformationen der Antike, , 1864-5208 ; ; Bd. 16

Disciplina

820.9/382

Soggetti

English literature - Early modern, 1500-1700 - History and criticism

Neoplatonism in literature

English literature - Greek influences

Renaissance - England

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION »GOOD WORKS« AND »FINE THINGS« -- CHAPTER 2: CIRCULARITIES OR THE POETICS OF RETURN -- CHAPTER 3: KNOWLEDGE AND HAPPINESS -- CHAPTER 4: TRANSPARENT SPHERES, OR THE BEAUTY OF CREATION -- CHAPTER 5: TRANSPARENT DUPLICITIES -- Backmatter

Sommario/riassunto

Transparency and Dissimulation analyses the configurations of ancient neoplatonism in early modern English texts. In looking closely at poems and prose writings by authors as diverse as Thomas Wyatt, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, John Donne, Edward Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Traherne, Thomas Browne and, last not least, Aphra Behn, this study attempts to map the outlines of a neoplatonic aesthetics in literary practice as well as to chart its transformative potential in the shifting contexts of cultural turbulency and denominational conflict in 16th- and 17th-century England. As part of a "new", contextually aware, aesthetics, it seeks to determine some of the functions neoplatonic structures - such as forms of recursivity or



certain modes of apophatic speech - are capable of fulfilling in combination and interaction with other, heterogeneous or even ideologically incompatible elements. What emerges is a surprisingly versatile poetics of excess and enigma, with strong Plotinian and Erigenist accents. This appears to need the traditional ingredients of petrarchism or courtliness only as material for the formation of new and dynamic wholes, revealing its radical metaphysical potential above all in the way it helps to resist the easy answers - in religion, science, or the fashions of libertine love.